The bells of Ashreign rang once at sunset, once at moonrise, and once for no reason at all.
Cassiel stood beneath the fractured tower, watching the sky bleed into a darker hue. The stars here were wrong — they shifted too quickly, forming constellations that whispered warnings in languages she could almost understand.
Behind him, the others gathered their breath, their strength, and what remained of their patience.
"How many times do you think we've almost died this week?" Mirae asked, tossing a pebble into the dry fountain. It skittered across the cracked marble with a sound like bone on bone.
"Almost?" Elior said, dragging a hand through his hair. "You're assuming the last hour counts as living."
Bastion said nothing. He was sharpening his sword with slow, deliberate strokes, each rasp of steel against stone a reminder of how thin the line between them and oblivion had become.
Cassiel exhaled and faced them.
"We can't stay here," he said. "We need to move before the next ring."
"Why?" Mirae asked lazily, though her eyes flickered toward the tower.
"Because the bells don't just signal time," Cassiel said. "They call something. And it's listening."
The ground beneath their feet hummed in silent agreement.
Without another word, they moved.
The streets of Ashreign stretched out before them like the veins of a dead city, winding, splitting, doubling back on themselves.
It would be easy to get lost.
Which was why, Cassiel realized, someone had scattered markers.
Little things: a ribbon tied to a broken lamppost, a crack in a specific shape, a line of chalk drawn where no rain could reach.
Each one pointed east.
Toward the heart of the city.
Toward the place where the real Ashreign still slept.
Or festered.
Mirae caught up beside her, flipping a knife idly between her fingers. "You think it's him?"
"Ilyan?" Cassiel said.
"No." Mirae smiled, a razor curve. "The other one. The thing that smiled at me."
Cassiel thought of the figure in the ruined cathedral — the one that had vanished when the Ashborne fell.
"I don't know," she said honestly. "But it's leading us somewhere."
"And we're following because...?"
Cassiel gave her a look. "Because if we don't, it'll come find us instead."
Mirae's smile widened. "Fair enough."
The deeper they went, the stranger Ashreign became.
Buildings twisted in impossible angles, doorways opened into skies, and statues wept silent, endless tears.
Once, they passed an old market square where the stalls still stood — but the vendors were skeletons wrapped in fine silks, heads bowed as if waiting for customers who would never come.
Bastion muttered something under his breath — a prayer, maybe.
Elior stopped at one point, touching a stone pillar etched with runes.
"This city wasn't just abandoned," he said softly. "It was... rewritten."
Mirae snorted. "Badly."
Cassiel knelt by a puddle that hadn't evaporated despite the dry air. In it, he saw not his own reflection — but the faint silhouette of a man running, always just out of reach.
"Ilyan," he whispered.
He straightened. "Come on. He's close."
They reached the Bell Quarter as the third toll began.
It wasn't a sound so much as a pressure — a vast, slow wave pushing against their bones.
The bells, cracked and battered, swung in the absent wind, singing of old promises and broken crowns.
And there, at the center of the square, stood a figure.
Cloaked. Hooded.
Cassiel raised a hand, signaling the others to fan out.
Slowly, cautiously, they approached.
The figure turned.
Not Ilyan.
Not anyone.
Its face was a mirror — smooth, silver, reflecting their own faces back at them.
Elior recoiled. Mirae snarled.
Bastion drew his sword.
The figure spoke, but no mouth moved.
"You seek the wrong ghost," it said. "The bells do not toll for the living."
Cassiel stepped forward, sword half-drawn.
"We're not looking for ghosts," he said coldly. "We're looking for a man."
The mirror shimmered. Images flashed across it — a silver-haired youth laughing; the same youth bleeding out on broken cobblestones; the same youth shattering into a thousand fragments.
Ilyan.
And then — another image.
A gate.
Twisted, ancient, bound in chains of thought and memory.
"He has already crossed," the mirror said. "And what follows will cross with him."
Cassiel's stomach turned.
"What gate?" Mirae snapped. "Where?"
The figure pointed — not with a hand, but with its entire being — toward the ruins at the city's edge.
"The Breach," Bastion said grimly. "Of course. Every cursed city has one."
The mirror figure trembled — then shattered into mist.
The bells stopped.
The square fell silent.
Cassiel turned to the others. "We move now."
They ran.
Through streets that shifted beneath their feet.
Past towers that leaned down to listen.
Over bridges that crumbled the moment they crossed.
Ashreign tried to stop them.
Tried to remember them into stone.
But they moved too fast, too desperately, hearts hammering, breath burning.
At the city's edge, they found the Breach.
It wasn't a gate.
It was a wound.
Reality itself torn open, bleeding light and shadow.
And standing before it—
Ilyan.
Or rather, something that had once been Ilyan.
He looked up as they approached, and for a moment — just a moment — Cassiel thought she saw recognition.
But then the light around him twisted.
The Breach pulsed.
And without a word, he stepped through.
Gone.
They stood there, panting, staring at the empty air.
Mirae cursed loudly.
Bastion slammed his sword into the ground with a roar.
Elior simply sat down, head in his hands.
Cassiel closed her eyes, feeling the faint pull of the Breach — a siren song promising answers she knew better than to trust.
"We were too late," she said finally.
No one answered.
Above them, the bells of Ashreign tolled one last time.